The following relates generally to wireless communication, and more specifically to dynamic sounding reference signal scheduling.
Wireless communications systems are widely deployed to provide various types of communication content such as voice, video, packet data, messaging, broadcast, and so on. These systems may be capable of supporting communication with multiple users by sharing the available system resources (e.g., time, frequency, and power). Examples of such multiple-access systems include code division multiple access (CDMA) systems, time division multiple access (TDMA) systems, frequency division multiple access (FDMA) systems, and orthogonal frequency division multiple access (OFDMA) systems. A wireless multiple-access communications system may include a number of base stations, each simultaneously supporting communication for multiple communication devices, which may each be referred to as a user equipment (UE).
Some wireless communication systems may operate in millimeter wave (mmW) frequency ranges, e.g., 28 GHz, 40 GHz, 60 GHz, etc. Wireless communication at these frequencies may be associated with increased signal attenuation (e.g., path loss), which may be influenced by various factors, such as temperature, barometric pressure, diffraction, etc. As a result, signal processing techniques, such as beamforming, may be used to coherently combine energy and overcome the path losses at these frequencies. Due to the increased amount of path loss in mmW communications systems, transmissions from the UE may be beamformed. Thus, uplink control channels may be received at a base station in a directional manner from multiple UEs.
Communications between a UE and a base station may include the use of sounding reference signals (SRSs). In some instances, an SRS may be used for wireless channel estimation. Channel estimates may be used to demodulate and decode subsequent data portions following the SRS. It may be desirable to adjust SRS parameters for SRS transmissions based on conditions of a communications environment and/or changes in the necessary scheduling of UEs (e.g., a changing number of UEs to be served by a base station). However, SRS transmission parameters may be pre-configured by an upper layer (e.g., a radio resource control (RRC) layer). The configuration of SRS transmission parameters by upper layers may result in costly adjustment of SRS parameters.